Donald Trump's four hours a night and the other extreme sleeping habits of our leaders

It's a subject that science is almost unanimous on. To function at their best, live long and prosper, humans need a good amount of sleep every night. Seven hours, ideally.

So it's a matter of curiosity that many of the world's leaders – the men and women charged with helping us all to live long and prosper – have spoken of their extreme sleeping habits. Few, it seems, respect that hallowed seven hour mark.

During a wide-ranging interview with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly this week, Donald Trump revealed that he is sleeping four to five hours a night in his new life as the US top dog. "I'm working long hours, long hours, right up til 12 o'clock, 1 in the morning." What time does he get up? "Five. I eat, I read the papers, I see what's going on on TV."

Anyone keen to point out that another hour or two might help him focus his thoughts would be well advised to bite their tongue: five hours actually represents a very healthy night's sleep for The Don. While on the campaign trail, Trump put the figure at just three to four hours – a habit that he claims helped him to succeed in the business world. “How does somebody that’s sleeping 12 and 14 hours a day compete with someone that’s sleeping three or four?”

Trump's miserly approach to getting some shut-eye puts him firmly in the category of what the Wall Street Journal once termed the "sleepless elite": the one per cent of the population who need very little sleep to get by. According to research, it's a gene thing: short sleepers tend to run in the family. They're also more likely to be optimistic and upbeat than us seven-hour-a-night mortals and find they don't need caffeine to feel energetic.

Sir Bernard Ingham, Baroness Thatcher's Downing Street press secretary, once revealed that the Iron Lady got by on a Trumpian amount of kip, waking early every morning to listen to Farming Today on Radio 4: "She slept four hours a night on weekdays. I wasn't with her at weekends. I guess she got a bit more then."

In fact, so boundless was her appetite for long working days, her husband Denis was once heard to snap: "Woman - bed!"

Chilled like Churchill

Winston Churchill relaxes with a cigarCredit:
Corbis

Winston Churchill is said to have been a man who valued his sleep – although that didn't stop him from cutting his nighttime hours to just four during the war.

Unlike Baroness Thatcher, he made up for the shortfall during the day, drinking a whiskey and soda at around 5pm and then bedding down for a two hour nap. According to Churchill, the routine helped him to squeeze one and a half day's work into 24 hours.

May's Struggle to Hit the Hay

“Fortunately I’m someone who does sleep pretty well, although I don’t get as many hours as I might like. You’re probably talking about five or six hours. There’s a lot of work to do.”

Those were the words of then Home Secretary Theresa May, talking to Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs in 2014. Today, it's fair to assume that May's workload is even weightier. Indeed, the Prime Minister told the Sunday Times that Brexit talks are keeping her up at night: “In this job you don’t get much time to sleep.”

“I’ll stay up until like 2 o’clock at night, reading briefings and doing work,” Obama once said on a talk show. A New York Times report revealed that he grew to enjoy his hours of alone time after dinner every day – although his colleagues weren't always so appreciative, often receiving emails at 1am in the morning.

As for his wake-up time, it's said that Obama aimed for around five hours of sleep a night, and believed 8am constituted a lie in.

Barack Obama, a tired manCredit:
Rex

Modi's Modus

Another notoriously hard worker is Indian PM Narendra Modi, who is said to work 20 hour days – much to the dismay of his staffers.

Modi has previously put his extreme routine down to yoga, which he practises regularly. In a 2011 online interview, he said: "I have very little sleep. All my doctor friends consistently advise me that I should increase my sleeping. I should sleep minimum for 5 to 6 hours. But I have become so workaholic and it has become my habit since many years that I hardly sleep for 3.5 hours. But it is a very sound sleep. I go to bed and within 30 seconds I fall asleep.

"There is one reason that I am associated with yoga and pranayam [a deep breathing technique]. A couple of times during the year, if I feel tired, I have the habit of doing deep breathing. After 5 to 10 minutes I feel fresh again. I am fresh in the morning and at night."

Berlusconi's Sweet Dreams

Of the many possibly true stories about Silvio Berlusconi's bedroom behaviour, one of the less salacious is that he only needs two to four hour sleeps. Exactly where the oft-quoted tidbit comes from isn't clear – but we do know that he once boasted of the curative powers of his short sleeps: “If I sleep for three hours, I still have enough energy to make love for another three.”